Kia ora, and welcome back to Term 3!

In this section of our newsletter, the Board would like to report back to the community on two matters, our Mathematics Target progress and our recent uniform survey.

Firstly, the Board are excited to share with you the mid-year results for Mathematics at Twizel Area School.

You’ll know from the Annual Targets section of our Strategic Plan that the 2022 target for the Primary and Middle School is “To accelerate the achievement of 189 Year 1-10 students in Mathematics” by “ensuring that the 80% of ākonga in Y1 – 10 will achieve at or exceed national expectations in Mathematics”. This goal was set in response to continued drops in the number of students working at or above curriculum expectations in Mathematics over several years. Twizel Area School outcomes have never dropped below the national expectations, but this does not mean that we won’t address a general decline. In the Literacy strands of Reading and Writing, there have always been stong, verifiable results.

Last year, following the Principal’s research and school visits, she was lucky enough to source Massey University training for pedagogical change in Mathematics and TAS was accepted onto their programme for 2022. This new pedagogy is known as DMIC (Developing Mathematical Inquiry Communities). Teachers in the Primary and Middle School have commenced with this training and pedagogical shift in the first half of this year. The support from Massey University comes in the form of 1:1 in-class mentoring and support for teachers each term, full resource provision and professional learning days once per term. This is a three year engagement at a minimum.

DMIC ensures that each student is engaged in a community of learners who tackle rich, problem solving activities across the Mathematics achievement objectives within the NZ curriculum. Each task is created at Massey University using universal design for learning principles and can be accessed at all levels of ability. The tasks are tiered as students progress through the overall curriculum outcomes. Teachers adapt the context of the activities to meet the needs of their learners.

Our identified need for pedagogical shift is outlined in the background and baseline data section of our Strategic Plan for this Annual Target for Mathematics:

“77% of Year 1-10 learners achieved at or above NZC expectations at the end of 2020.
In 2021, the target was to ensure that the 80% of ākonga in Y1 – 10 will achieve at or exceed national expectations in mathematics.
The 2021 outcome was: 70% of ākonga in Y1 – 10 achieved at or exceed national expectations in mathematics.
This target has been selected as a continued goal because of disruptions over the last 2 years due to COVID. It has been hard to gain traction with the goal and PLG (Professional Learning Group).
Having now engaged with a selected PLD provider (DMIC) through Massey University, we feel better supported in improving our curriculum outcomes in the Mathematics learning area.
In 2022, the target is to ensure that the 80% of ākonga in Y1 – 10 will achieve at or exceed national expectations in mathematics.”

These are Twizel Area School diagnostic results for start and mid 2022:

The Board is incredibly pleased to see such strong improvement so quickly from the implementation of DMIC and is excited to see whether the improvements sustain across the year. The data for the year so far would suggest that we may well meet or exceed the annual target. 

The Board would like to pass on appreciation for our teachers and students, and their willingness to take on new challenges and learning styles as we continually improve our learning programmes at Twizel Area School.

In our second item, the Board would like to show the community the results of our uniform survey. Following the survey, the Board have resolved to form a sub-committee to process these results and ask further questions of the community as we progress through the needs of the Human Rights Committee report.

Here is the data report (written responses have been excluded as they identify individual participants, this data will be included in the upcoming sub-committee consultations):

School Uniform Consultation Data

Thank you for your participation in the survey, the sub-committee will consider these results and communicate further with the community in the near future.

The Board at Twizel Area School